Definition: a word that uses its sound or pronunciation as its meaning.
Examples:
Robert Frost
"Out, Out--"
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Effect: "Snarled" and "rattled" breathe life into the buzz-saw, because the onomatopoeic essence of those two words provide auditory imagery, making it possible to visualize, or at least have a sense of, the scene unfolding. Shakespeare Hamlet Hamlet
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life. Effect: Here, "shuffled off" means to literally to thrust aside, or get rid of; adding in the sound of the word "shuffled", one can also picture the chains of life ("mortal coil") scraping together as the prisoner of these chains tries to take off the chains by moving them this way and that, as these are all definitions of the word "shuffle". The auditory imagery the word "shuffle" provides helps to give a mental picture of an actual person, perhaps Hamlet himself, trying to rid himself of life's metaphorical chains.
Onomatopoeia
Definition: a word that uses its sound or pronunciation as its meaning.
Examples:
Robert Frost
"Out, Out--"
The buzz-saw snarled and rattled in the yard
And made dust and dropped stove-length sticks of wood,
Effect: "Snarled" and "rattled" breathe life into the buzz-saw, because the onomatopoeic essence of those two words provide auditory imagery, making it possible to visualize, or at least have a sense of, the scene unfolding.
Shakespeare
Hamlet
Hamlet
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
Effect: Here, "shuffled off" means to literally to thrust aside, or get rid of; adding in the sound of the word "shuffled", one can also picture the chains of life ("mortal coil") scraping together as the prisoner of these chains tries to take off the chains by moving them this way and that, as these are all definitions of the word "shuffle". The auditory imagery the word "shuffle" provides helps to give a mental picture of an actual person, perhaps Hamlet himself, trying to rid himself of life's metaphorical chains.
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